Ash Wednesday 2014 "What About those Ashes?"

Some of you probably saw my Facebook post from last night. I posted a picture of our own Eyob Marshall with a cross of ashes on his forehead. (8 yr old parishioner who attends the 10:30 service with his mother Kelly). Eyob knew that he wouldn’t be able to attend Ash Wednesday services but he, as is his style, had questions. So last night, as he got ready to leave the pancake supper Eyob came up to me and asked, “what’s with these ashes? I don’t understand.”
What a great question, right?
And you know what?
In over six years of ordained ministry no one-- NO ONE-- has ever asked me what Ash Wednesday was all about. And I don’t think that’s because everyone knows what’s with these ashes… I think we just don’t think about it all that much.
So what IS with these ashes?
Ash Wednesday is a day in our church year reserved for our humanity. Our utter and complete and thorough humanity.
Ash Wednesday is a day when that humanity is spread out in front of us. In all it’s dustiness.
Ash Wednesday is a day to remember that without God, all that we are---all the stuff that makes us uniquely us----is nothing but dust. Ash Wednesday is a day to remember that Without God we are empty, we are dull, we are without substance.
Without God we are just dust.
Ash Wednesday marks the first day of Lent and Lent is a forty day journey when we strive  to open ourselves to God, to re-engage in a relationship with God.
Lent is a journey from us to God and back again. Lent is a season for getting to know God and inviting God to get to know us.
On Ash Wednesday we open our dustiness to the cleansing grace of God. It’s the first day of our Lenten trek to Easter, a journey to intentionally show God more than just the spit and polish shiny “us” of Sundays, a journey where we expose God to the fullness of who we are--from the glorious, prayerful and committed Christian parts of us to the darker, more doubting, more despairing, more self-loathing, yes even more sinful and wretched parts of us.
So what about these ashes?
Well as I told Eyob, when these ashes are pressed into your skin, remember this: without God, we are nothing but dust.
But with God?
Well with God we are all that we can dream, all that we can imagine, all that we can long for.
And then some.

A well-done Lent allows God plenty of room and plenty of time to get to know us, the good the bad and the ugly.
A well-done Lent allows us to get to know God—the forgiving, loving and delighted God who wants nothing more than to meet us with joy at the empty tomb.
A well-done Lent begins with the dust of our mortality and ends in the resurrection light of Love on Easter morning.
 A well-done Lent is forty days of making room for the God who creates amazing, astounding and wonderful things out of dust. The dust of you and the dust of me.
So as those dusty ashes are pressed into your skin tonight remember that while you are but dust, you can be, you will be and you are, so very much more, thanks be to God.
May these forty days be a dust clearing, hope starting, love expressing journey into a deeper more honest relationship with our Creator, a God, who working in us can do so much more than we can ever ask or imagine.
Amen.